Managing your money successfully includes keeping a close eye on your expenses. One way to do that is to take advantage of free software and services. Free personal finance software can be surprisingly robust, helping you track spending, create and manage budgets, and run reports.
Are you curious about free software personal finance? Or maybe you just want to find the best personal finance software. I mean, you know how much fun the holidays can be, so you’d rather spend your time and money on that instead of installing a new program. But whether it’s an update on interest rates or tax refunds, having access to a program that can help you do your finances can be extremely useful. Whether your computer runs on Windows or macOS (or even Linux) or you do all your budgeting on your phone, you’ll find a no-cost selection below for tracking your finances and planning for the future.
You can complete your financial toolset with free personal tax preparation software to keep more of your money in your pocket. With finances, it’s important to ensure you know what is happening and exactly how much money you have. Some people don’t like doing this, hence the popularity of Mint.com which lets you spend all of your time with your head in the cloud until, of course, there’s a mistake and the funds are gone. Learn about the best free financial software for mac or the best personal finance software for windows 10.
Personal finance is one of the most important aspects in one’s life that need to be looked at with microscopic inspection and has to be managed properly in order to ensure financial stability. To help you take care of your finances, we will let you know of some free personal finance software that are easy-to-use and easy to incorporate in daily life. We will present a list that lists personal finance software free to download and use. These best free personal finance software will, without a doubt, make your financial life more stable and without complications. This list of free personal finance software is highly researched and reliable.
What is the best way to track personal finances?
Apps and budgeting software make it easy to categorize your spending so you can see when and where your money is going—at a glance. Knowing these patterns is the first step toward changing your behavior to start saving more.
1. Mint
Mint is one of the most popular personal finance free software of 2016. Its UI is an absolute treat to use, along with the loaded features of personal finance management that put it at the front of the personal finance game. Mint shows you your financial situation in a broader sense; it shows your total net worth along with each and every minute detail of every transaction that you made so you can keep track of personal and professional expenses from microscopic lens. It allows you to connect to your PayPal so you can monitor your online transactions as well. It uses visual images to illustrate your finances, and we believe it is the best feature of Mint. It is web-based and has apps for all major platforms.
2. Buddi
Buddi helps you perform major financial tasks like budgeting, tracking accounts, creating personal finance reports and some other nifty features. You enter your transactions manually, and let Buddi take the front seat to keep the record safe and secure and record monthly reports. Buddi is available on Windows, Linux and Mac, so you can use it on your different devices. It will become your perfect buddy. Buddi is a free personal finance software that keeps your financial data encrypted and is perfect for small financial tasks that one needs to perform daily. You can add more features by downloading more plugins.
3. AceMoney Lite
AceMoney Lite is an all-rounder financial software that focuses on investment tracking and allows you to have two financial accounts that can be managed with a single one. It lets you handle all your transactions, manage them, edit them at your will and balance them at the end. You can download these transactions whenever you want and produce monthly reports based on them. It lets you manage your accounts, your banks and payees. It also lets you schedule your payments. The full version of AceMoney has a lot of other options and costs $40.
4. GnuCash
GnuCash is perfect for individuals, homes and small businesses to keep track of their accounts. It is available on Windows, Linux and Mac, along with an Android app. It lets you add accounts, schedule regular payments, and add assets. If you have been using other financial software, you can import your data from them to GnuCash in QIF and dOFX formats. GnuCash is not as simple and requires that you know your way around basic accounting. Once you get familiarized with GnuCash, it will make your financial life a lot simpler by its regular reporting, financial advisory and data analysis to help you make wiser financial decisions.
5. Free Budget Spreadsheets
If you don’t need fully featured personal financial software and you’re just concerned about keeping a budget, there are some great free budget spreadsheet templates you can use with Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Calc or Google Sheets. Just download and open them in your spreadsheet software to get a handle on your cash flow.
6. Personal Capital
Personal Capital offers free financial software for tracking investments and planning for retirement, in addition to its tools for cash flow, spending, budgeting and net worth. Personal Capital’s focus is on investments, showing you the performance of your portfolio over time and helping you make decisions for the future, so its budgeting components aren’t as robust as other software.
If you’re not an investor or prefer fine-tuning your budget to getting the broad view, Personal Capital may not be the best fit. However, if you want to save for college or retirement, its free tools will show you whether you’re on track.
Personal Capital can be accessed via the web or apps for Android and iOS.
7. AceMoney Lite
AceMoney Lite bills itself as the best Quicken alternative. You can manage your budgets, track your finances in multiple currencies, keep an eye on your investments and analyze your spending habits. You can also do online banking. As this is the lite version, you’re limited to two accounts; the full version supports unlimited accounts.
AceMoney Lite is compatible with Windows and Mac OS X.
8. Quicken
Having been around for several decades, Quicken is one of the most established personal finance software on the market. You can use the software to manage various aspects of your financial life from budget creation to debt tracking, savings goals, and even investment coaching. The software features Excel exporting, which allows you to manipulate and perform additional calculations on your data. One of the more advanced features includes bill paying, which allows you to set up payments for your bills right from the software. You can even use it to track the value of your assets to have an accurate calculation of your total net worth. The app is robust enough to manage both your personal and business expenses and even handles property management functions like rental payments from tenants. Quicken offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. The software starts at $35.99 per year and is available for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android.
9. YNAB
You Need a Budget, or YNAB, is a personal finance software that’s aimed to help you improve your financial literacy as you manage your monthly budget. As you create your budget and manage your daily finances, the software provides you with tutorials that will help you tackle some of the tougher financial topics. If you’ve been struggling with bad financial habits, YNAB can help you break those through a few basic financial management rules.
The software automatically links to your bank account, integrating your spending information for analysis and budget tracking. You can keep tabs on how you’re tracking toward your monthly budget and take action if you’re overspending. It doesn’t include any investment tracking capabilities. YNAB offers a 34-day free trial that allows you to use the software while you decide whether it’s right for your personal finance goals. The full software is $14.99 monthly or $98.99 annually.
10. Mvelopes
The traditional envelope budgeting system helps you stick to a budget by using envelopes to manage your money. Once you’ve broken down your budget, you put that amount of cash into different envelopes. So, if you budget $100 for gas for the week, you place that amount in a “gas” envelope. Once you’ve spent that $100, that’s it. Mvelopes takes this same approach to budget, except that it’s done digitally on your phone and computer rather than with physical cash.
Choose the financial goals that are most important to you, then add your bank accounts and set your income. Mvelopes will help you create a budget and set up your “envelopes.” The software tracks your spending and shows you what you’ve spent from each envelope to keep you on budget throughout the month.
The basic version starts at $5.97 per month, and you can try Mvelopes for 30 days for, free when you enroll in the premier plan at $9.97 per month.
11. TurboTax
You may not necessarily need TurboTax to manage your finances throughout the entire year, but when it’s tax time, the software can come in handy. While it’s one of the pricier tax preparation tools, it’s also consumer-friendly, walking you through your tax preparation to help you accurately file your tax return. Entering your tax information is fairly simple—you can import your W-2 information from your employer or take a picture of it and the software will transfer the information into the form.
If you’ve used TurboTax in previous years, the software will remember your personal information and ask whether there have been any major changes. The most basic version lets you file your federal and state return for free if all you use is form 1040 with no attached schedules.
On the higher end, TurboTax Live connects you with a tax expert to give you personalized advice and answer questions about your tax return. Paid versions of TurboTax include a feature to help you uncover deductions you may not have known were available to you. While you can use TurboTax on the web, you can also download the software to your device for added security.
Tips for Choosing Free Personal Finance Software
While choosing a free personal finance software, you should look for the following things:
- Available on maximum platforms. You will be adding transactions and other stuff frequently on the go, so you need a solution that is available on the platforms you use for your desktop and mobile devices.
- Provides all basic personal finance features. It should have all the necessary features and they should work flawlessly.
- Simple. We cannot stress this enough, if your personal finance software is cluttered with features and confusing, you will end up not logging your transactions on it at all.
- Best free personal finance software are always secure, please make sure you choose one that offers encryption.
Conclusion
Despite being an industry that is buzzing with activity, there are numerous myths and misconceptions that surround free financial software. In some of these myths, it is assumed that financial software for free is inherently inadequate or inferior as compared to paid versions of the same.
Among the most widely used tools for personal investment, finance tools evolve as dynamic tools that help manage day-to-day financial transactions. Many people confuse budgeting and accounting with personal finance due to its similarities. In fact, personal finance is a broader term that includes features like budgeting and accounting but also includes insurance, investment management, savings and other assets in the area of money. The presence of loans, real estate and stocks make personal finance an imperative part of a modern lifestyle.